Since the release of KDE 4 a year ago, the KDE Project has suffered a lot of criticism for previous 4.0 versions. With KDE 4.2, codenamed "The Answer", KDE developers hope to silence the critics.

While the earlier version 4.0 was principally aimed at developers and 4.1 at experienced users, according to the official press release, "The Answer" is clearly designated for the end-user market. Along with a large number of bugfixes, the latest release comes with an abundance of new features. To coincide with the launch, the project's news page has been totally revamped.